While there is no doubt that technology has impacted B2B lead generation, it’s important that you don’t forget to ask what’s actually working for you. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s great. You still need to produce leads, and your methods need to produce a good return on your investment (ROI).
A recent article at Converge.xyz notes that despite the influence of social media and other digital forms of marketing, there’s simply no replacement for the in-person event. A conference, expo, or seminar is practical because it initiates face-to-face contact with your potential buyer, beginning a business relationship.
However, as you know, live events like a conference or expo can be costly compared to digital methods like social media, so you want to get the most impact possible out of your investment. Furthermore, with live events, you offer your clients and prospects no flexibility regarding the time and place you’ll meet or communicate. This is often a challenge for many busy executives who otherwise may be interested and willing to speak with you.
Related: Here’s How to Get More Actionable Leads
Table of Contents
Increase Your Marketing ROI With the Right Lead Generation Tools
This is where another traditional B2B lead generation tool comes in. You can use telemarketing to increase your ROI for your live event by:
- Calling your contacts to advertise the event and answer questions about the speakers, featured vendors, or logistics
- Following up after the event to see which aspects were most valuable and what they’d like to see if the future
- A follow-up call can also help you ascertain where your contact is in the buying cycle and whether they are ready to do business with you.
- Completing your qualification process by phone if your contact is not available to meet in person.
Another effective B2B lead generation tool is email. This digital method allows you to send an email newsletter or send news of a particular promotion, but its drawback is that it can be a bit impersonal. You are left to examine which emails get attention, debating whether it is the subject line content or the promotion in the email that warranted the click-throughs you received.
Just like telemarketing can support your live events, it is also a good partner for email newsletters and promotions to boost your lead generation:
- A personal conversation with your email contacts can help you identify which email content is most helpful and best received.
- You can follow up on a particular promotion or newsletter topic to see whether it applied to their situation.
- Here also, telemarketing helps check in to see whether your potential buyer is involved with the decision-making process, the availability of others involved with the decision, schedule or time frame for making a decision, and whether they are considering your product or service.
With any B2B lead generation tool, telemarketing offers a personal connection often missing in digital methods. Use it to develop trust and loyalty in any good business relationship, which is hard to create in a social media or email connection.
B2B Lead Generation is Less of a Guessing Game With Telemarketing
While both B2C and B2B lead generation require an investment in brand awareness, meticulous planning, and the development of personal connections, B2B relationships are ideally suited for growth through telemarketing. B2B buyers are more receptive to telemarketing, and using this channel in your marketing strategy can provide an excellent return on your investment.
A lot of careful planning goes into a successful B2B lead generation strategy. The use of data from analytics is a critical tool for developing an effective technique, which can then be used to create an effective telemarketing campaign.
Telemarketing is a proactive communication tool, so it provides an opportunity for instant information about your potential buyer. By contrast, digital methods like email and social media require you to post something and then wait to see if it received any attention.
Telemarketing allows for direct contact and an immediate resolution of any concerns or questions. For example, suppose the contact is not interested in initiating a business relationship. In that case, the telemarketer can distinguish whether this answer is a not yet or a genuine no. If it’s simply not the right time, the telemarketer can make a note of a follow-up target date.
In some cases, it may be challenging to determine whether the lead needs additional nurturing to move forward in the engagement cycle. Telemarketers can ask a few more questions to determine if the obstacles to purchase are temporary or permanent.
Telemarketing – the Ultimate B2B Lead Generation Tool
When a telemarketer begins a campaign, they are armed with a lead list, with the hope of identifying opportunities for sales. In a B2B environment, buyers are also looking to advance and improve their processes, so they are happy to receive telemarketing calls.
A B2B buyer is responsible for making important purchasing decisions for their company, and a poor buying decision can negatively impact their reputation and career. For many B2B buyers, a business relationship through telemarketing allows them to ask questions to make a more informed purchasing decision.
One of the benefits of telemarketing is that you can be confident that you are providing a genuinely qualified lead when you transition a lead over to the sales team. In addition, using telemarketing to fuel B2B lead generation allows you to develop relationships with potential buyers that flow seamlessly into relationships with customers as they convert to new sales.
Other B2B Lead Generation Tools to Check Out for Your Business
Aside from the basic marketing functions of B2B lead generation software, many of them offer other features. For example, Marketo helps you generate qualified leads by providing landing pages and progressive forms. The service also enables you to develop leads and qualify them before reaching your sales team. In addition, it is available in a variety of price plans depending on the size of your database. If you’re not sure whether to go for a paid or free version, try a 14-day trial to find out what features it has to offer.
As for the functionality, most lead generation software packages come with a CRM, which can track leads and follow up on them. In addition, many of these applications can automatically update their dashboard with new leads, which makes tracking them easy. However, you should be careful about the complexity of their dashboard. Some users report feeling overwhelmed by their dashboard—(If you don’t know what to look for in a CRM, check out HubSpot).
Other B2B lead generation software packages have useful features for many businesses. For instance, Seedprod’s drag-and-drop editor and pre-built templates help you quickly set up a professional-looking landing page. You can also use a social proof system like LinkedIn or Gmail. It provides data for every single lead. And it’s free! Regardless of which B2B lead generation software package you choose, there’s a perfect option for you.
Now, here are some B2B lead generation tools that may be beneficial for your organization:
OptinMonster
OptinMonster has a drag-and-drop builder to create attractive pop-ups and capture email addresses; it’s a comprehensive email marketing tool and lead generation tool. OptinMonster’s 50-plus free templates are designed to encourage users to subscribe to your emails. With a combination of your lead magnet strategy and OptinMonster’s drag-and-drop builder, you can quickly create an eye-catching survey and capture valuable leads.
ReferralCandy
ReferralCandy is an automation tool for affiliate and referral marketing. Its feature-rich dashboard lets you customize your emails and pop-ups, and it lets you set up a meeting schedule for prospects and sales reps. You can even get a look at a prospect’s purchase history and see what their previous actions have been. Then, you can follow up with them using one of several methods that will yield the best results.
ReferralCandy can help you grow your sales by automating affiliate marketing and referrals. Its features also include a detailed dashboard to monitor the success of your efforts and refine your marketing strategies based on the insights you get. These tools also provide metrics to help you prepare for future campaigns. In addition to being powerful, they can increase your sales by a significant margin.
Visitor Insites
Visitor Insights is another excellent tool for lead generation. It allows you to track website visitors and get their contact information. Many companies use IP tracking, but it doesn’t give you enough information about the visitor to make an effective follow-up. Instead, Visitor Insites can tell you which leads are most likely to become customers.
Drift
Drift offers verified business information and an advanced filtering system to create better conversations, unlike most other lead generation tools. The tool features live chat, sales videos, and email-related automation. Drift connects with other devices. It has Premium, Advanced, and Enterprise plans. Its integration capabilities are another of its highlights. The price is competitive, though.
Related: Lead Generation for Cybersecurity Organizations
Mailchimp
With this multipurpose lead generation tool, you can create compelling emails and collect leads through your website. Mailchimp has an email verification system that ensures the authenticity of emails. The software also supports marketing automation. It offers a free trial, a $17/month plan, and more expensive subscriptions. You can also use it to collect leads on social media. A multifunctional tool such as Mailchimp has many features and can easily help you find new customers.
SyncApps by Cazoomi
SyncApps allows you to integrate your data from different sources into one place. This makes it easy to implement and track your lead generation efforts. The integrated cloud, plug-in, and on-premise solutions, combined with the user interface, make it easy to manage all your data. It also eliminates manual data entry and errors. And you can add several other features to your existing CRM.
AeroLeads
This software is a multifunctional lead generation tool that allows you to collect and store emails through your site. It can also search through LinkedIn and other networks to find email addresses. The app also allows you to contact leads through their private messages. It is available for free on several different platforms. It offers several features and price plans. It is easy to use and has a free version. It can be accessed through your website and is compatible with other emailing systems.
Besides the landing page, forms can help you identify and collect leads. In addition, they can help you target your leads, allowing you to create more effective email marketing campaigns. You can also use these tools to export your data to CRMs. These tools can also export data to Hubspot CRM, FreshSales, and Salesforce. AeroLeads helps you find email addresses and other contact information. Moreover, they help you keep lead records in real-time.
A B2B lead generation software will help you generate and track leads from social media, company pages, and email campaigns. It can also help you create a landing page for your sales team. Ultimately, it will provide you with an effective marketing strategy for your B2B business. Once you have found the best tools, you can grow your business. You’ll be glad you did! The best B2B lead generation software is flexible and adaptable to your needs and budget.
Here’s Why Telemarketing Is the B2B Lead Generation Tool You’re Missing
The main goal of any B2B lead generation campaign is, of course, to close the sale. However, there are other goals along the way that can help strengthen your marketing efforts and help you refine your content strategy. So how do you know if your telemarketing company is adding value by providing leads and gathering information that helps shape your strategy?
Here are several ways to evaluate your telemarketing provider to see if they are not only offering effective B2B lead generation but also helping you in other ways to improve your strategy:
Why you should include telemarketing in your strategy: Telemarketers are trained communicators, so they offer a valuable opportunity to connect with your contacts and enter into a conversation with them. In addition, they gather the information that can spring into further interactions and help your contact move along in the buying cycle.
Telemarketers help buyers get the information they need to plan their purchase, answer any reservations or questions and provide access to additional content that addresses any challenges that they are facing. This process of qualifying leads prepares the potential buyer and allows a sales rep to move in and close the deal. In addition, qualified leads give you a clear understanding of who the lead is, what they need, and whether you can meet those needs.
Nurturing leads: Qualifying and nurturing leads is a core function of telemarketers. It’s too costly for your sales team to spend time determining which leads are serious possibilities for sales, so telemarketers can fill this unique role of identifying and then nurturing leads so that they move further into the engagement cycle.
Measuring success: Communication between your telemarketing agency and your own marketing team is not over after the telemarketing campaign. A successful B2B lead generation effort is not complete without an evaluation of the performance of the campaign. How many leads were actually qualified, and what percentage was completed with a sale?
Why you should outsource telemarketing: You may be tempted to do your own telemarketing campaign in-house, but there’s a good reason to outsource. Telemarketers use advanced dialing systems to handle calls efficiently, and they are familiar with the complex regulations that govern the telemarketing industry. They also have reporting tools to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaign.
Telemarketing Is Irreplaceable as an Interactive, Lead Generation Tool
Regardless of how great of a strategic plan you’ve implemented for creating growth, there’s always a competitor catching on to the same strategy or a new promotion that requires an additional push. In addition, there’s always some refining to do. You are always working on getting your content read, more responses on social media, and higher-quality leads.
The Campaign Confidence Gap presented the results of a survey conducted by SnapApp and DemandGen. It demonstrated the pressure on marketers to provide leads to their sales teams, but the lack of confidence that the techniques being used were leading to sales growth.
The results make it clear that marketers often feel as if they are walking blindfolded when spurring sales leads in their organizations. Of the respondents, 82 percent said that they were only somewhat or not very confident that their strategies for lead generation were effective at creating growth opportunities for the sales team.
Why the Need for Telemarketing as a Lead Generation Tool Is Rising
Lead generation tops the concerns of marketers involved in the survey. Forty-one percent said that identifying new lead sources was their primary challenge in their marketing efforts.
A switch to buyer-centric marketing: One of the most dramatic changes in marketing in recent years is a move away from seller-centric marketing strategies. Buyers, even in the B2B marketing sector, are increasingly responding to more personalized marketing tools. You’re still telling your brand story, but it requires a little more finesse in the execution. In your marketing efforts, there has to be a focus on the problems, challenges, and needs of your target audience, and then a discussion of how your company is unique and particularly positioned to solve those problems or answer a need.
Senior vice president of marketing at SnapApp, Aaron Dun, says that companies that fail to become buyer-centric in 2017 will begin to feel a more serious impact on their sales.
Marketing is increasingly interactive: Companies are recognizing the need to be active on social media, allowing your target audience to voice their opinions and raise concerns. As a marketer, you welcome feedback, and your brand thrives the more you successfully get your target audience to share your content.
As a result, your content must be more than just interactive. It’s got to be compelling, highly relevant, and specific enough to demonstrate your expertise in the industry. At the same time, though, it’s got to be just general enough that you’re not at risk of only appealing to a couple of isolated people with a highly specific problem.
In other words, don’t create content simply to get your name out there. There must be a purpose to it. It should match your target audience’s problems with a solution that only your company can provide. It needs to capture your audience’s attention and then provide a way for you to engage with them further through an effective call to action.
The need for content-enabled marketing: The survey results also provide support for the shift to content-enabled campaigns, which favor shorter, high-value content to drive engagement with your target audience. Companies that favor content-enabled campaigns are experiencing a spike in their conversion rates, with 66 percent of those using this approach reporting a five percent increase in click-through rates. None of the companies using content-enabled strategies reported a decline in their conversion rates.
The survey authors dug deeper, asking respondents what the results of their content-enabled campaigns produced. This type of technique provided the organizations with higher quality leads in 34 percent of respondents and leads that moved more quickly through the conversion to sales among 22 percent of participants in the survey.
You Can’t Ignore Telemarketing If You Want Better Leads
Much of the focus for marketing strategies has been recently devoted to social media and other digital channels for lead generation. However, telemarketing remains a tried-and-true resource for lead generation that is surprisingly agile at answering every new trend occurring in content marketing. Here are the ways that telemarketing fits the demands of the current lead generation culture:
Telemarketing is buyer-centric
When you employ a high-quality telemarketing specialist, you create the perfect buyer-centric conversation. You gain valuable feedback by listening to your potential buyer and finding out what types of content they prefer, whether they are the sole decision-maker in the purchasing process, and what kinds of challenges they are facing in their organization. The information you gain through telemarketing helps you develop relationships, as well as highly-relevant content that serves your target audience.
Telemarketing is highly interactive
What could be more interactive than a one-on-one conversation with your potential buyer? Not only do you gain critical information about your contact at the company, but you begin to build a relationship marked by trust and loyalty, elements necessary in today’s B2B marketing climate.
Telemarketing is content-enabled marketing
When you invest in telemarketing, you provide highly-valuable resources to your potential buyers. They will have the opportunity to ask their specific questions, voice their concerns and receive access to content most relevant to their position and challenges in their role in the organization. Your contact could spend hours wading through an online library of blogs and white papers, but within a five-minute conversation, you could direct them to a blog entry that solves a challenge they’ve been experiencing.
Related: The Secret to Lead Generation for B2B Enterprises
The culture of marketing is changing, and marketers that fail to recognize the trends and capture their momentum will feel the pain in their lack of sales growth. However, for many of these changes, the key is not the invention of a new marketing channel or the production of more infographics but the smart use of existing marketing tools.
Telemarketing is one of the most flexible and dynamic tools available to marketing teams. To learn more about how to use it to improve your lead generation efforts and deliver more conversions to your sales team, make an appointment to talk with our experts at Blue Valley Telemarketing.
Last Updated on September 14, 2023 by Ronen Ben-Dror